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Click here for:| Date: | Thursday |
| Time: | 1:30-3:00 PM |
| Place: | 106 B Studio Room, Classroom Building, OSU |
| & Nielsen Hall, Room 103, OU | |
| Inquiries: | kaladi.babu@okstate.edu or kao@nhn.ou.edu |
| Date: | Thursday |
| Time: | 3:30-4:30 PM |
| Place: | PS 110 |
| Inquiries: | perk@okstate.edu or s.nandi@okstate.edu |
| Date: | Friday (bi)weekly |
| Time: | 2:00 PM |
| Place: | PS 147 |
| Inquiries: | perk@okstate.edu or girish.agarwal@okstate.edu |
No talks scheduled
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First week of classes
No colloquium scheduled.
Second week of classes.
Labor Day holiday: Monday, September 2.
| Speaker: | Dr. Kuver Sinha |
| Department of Physics | |
| Syracuse University | |
| Date: | Monday, September 9, 2013 |
| Time: | 10:30 AM |
| Place: | 106 B Studio Room, Classroom Building, OSU |
| & Nielsen Hall, Room 103, OU | |
| Title: | Vector Boson Fusion Processes: |
| EW-kinos, Sleptons, and Compressed Top Squarks at LHC |
Two presentations on local activities and opportunities
| Date: | Thursday, September 12, 2013 |
| Time: | 3:30 PM, Place: PS 110 |
| Speaker: | Dr. Mario F. Borunda |
| Title: | Three Brief Stories in Quantum Materials: |
| Graphene, Qubits, and Semiclassical Methods |
| Speaker: | Dr. Jacques H.H. Perk and Dr. Helen Au-Yang Perk |
| Title: | Our Current Activities in Mathematical Physics: |
| Quantum Ising Chain, Quasicrystals, Parafermions, and Proximity Effects |
Note: The traditional student-speaker chat will begin in Physical Sciences Room 147 at 3:00 PM. All students are welcome! Refreshments will be served.
| Speaker: | Dr. Muhammad Saleem |
| Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics & Astronomy | |
| University of Oklahoma | |
| Date: | Thursday, September 19, 2013 |
| Time: | 1:30 PM |
| Place: | 106 B Studio Room, Classroom Building, OSU |
| & Nielsen Hall, Room 103, OU | |
| Title: | Production of Top Quark Pairs at the LHC |
| Speaker: | Dr. Barbara Capogrosso-Sansone |
| Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics & Astronomy | |
| University of Oklahoma | |
| Date: | Thursday, September 19, 2013 |
| Time: | 3:30 PM |
| Place: | PS 110 |
| Title: | Quantum Phases of Bosonic Polar Molecules in Optical Lattice Geometries |
In this talk I will address properties of a lattice gas of polar bosonic molecules confined within single-, bi-, and multi-layer geometries—the molecular dipole moments are aligned perpendicularly to the layers. The results presented are based on Quantum Monte Carlo simulations. I will discuss phases and phase transitions displayed by such systems—with emphasis on solids and supersolids and multimer superfluidity. In the single layer geometry, I will focus on how the presence of atoms affects molecular solid phases stabilized by dipolar interactions, while in bi- and multi-layer geometries, my focus will be on the formation of pairs and multimers.
Note: The traditional student-speaker chat will begin in Physical Sciences Room 147 at 3:00 PM. All students are welcome! Refreshments will be served.
| Speaker: | Dr. Michelle D. Shinn |
| Senior Staff Scientist | |
| Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility | |
| (Jefferson Lab), Newport News, Virginia | |
| Date: | Thursday, September 26, 2013 |
| Time: | 1:30 PM |
| Place: | 106 B Studio Room, Classroom Building, OSU |
| & Nielsen Hall, Room 103, OU | |
| Title: | Exploring the Nature of Matter along the High Intensity Frontier |
Accelerator-based experiments to find particles responsible for the effects we attribute to dark matter are oft-thought of to be the province of high energy physics facilities like the LHC. However, there are a number of hypothesized BSM particles with masses that put them in the range of accelerators doing medium energy physics. In my presentation I will introduce the concept of superconducting radio frequency acceleration, specifically as it is used at Jefferson Lab (JLab), located in Newport News, VA, to produce beams of particles with high (many 10’s to 100’s of MHz) repetition rate. These properties of the electron accelerators at JLab place experiments that can be done simultaneously in 3 (soon 4) separate experimental halls at the Intensity Frontier. In the remainder of my presentation I will discuss planned or proposed experiments to attempt to detect the hypothesized A′ vector boson.
| Speaker: | Dr. Michelle D. Shinn |
| Senior Staff Scientist | |
| Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility | |
| (Jefferson Lab), Newport News, Virginia | |
| Date: | Thursday, September 26, 2013 |
| Time: | 3:30 PM |
| Place: | PS 110 |
| Title: | Photon Physics with Jefferson Lab’s Free-Electron Laser |
Jefferson Lab’s IR Upgrade FEL building was planned from the beginning to be a user facility, and includes an associated 600 m2 area containing seven laboratories. The high average power capability—multikilowatt-level—in the near-infrared (1-3 microns), and many hundreds of watts at shorter and longer wavelengths, along with an ultrafast (∼ 0.2 ps) high PRF (10’s MHz) temporal structure makes this laser a unique source for both applied and basic research. In addition to the FEL, we have a dedicated laboratory within the same facility capable of delivering high power (many tens of watts) of broadband THz light. In this presentation, I will give an overview of the FEL facility and its current performance, and highlights of past and future experiments.
Note: The traditional student-speaker chat will begin in Physical Sciences Room 147 at 3:00 PM. All students are welcome! Refreshments will be served.
| Speaker: | Zhouyang Kang |
| Department of Physics | |
| Oklahoma State University | |
| Date: | Thursday, October 3, 2013 |
| Time: | 3:30 PM |
| Place: | PS 110 |
| Title: | Infrared Structural Biology: An Emerging Technology |
Protein structures determine protein functions. Structural biology is of great importance toward understanding protein functions. X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy have made significant contributions to the large field of protein sciences. However, these structural biology techniques are not suitable for detecting the dynamic structural changes during protein function. In my talk, I will introduce the development of infrared structural biology, an emerging technology for protein structural dynamics. One key element of infrared structural biology is the development of vibrational structural marker (VSM) library that translates infrared spectroscopic signals into specific structural information. Quantum theory based first principle computational studies combined with isotope editing and site specific mutation of proteins were employed in this study. In addition, I will show how time-resolved infrared structural biology is employed to study proton transfer and receptor activation in biological signaling. Infrared structural biology is expected to emerge as a powerful technique for understanding the functional mechanism of a broad range of proteins.
Note: The traditional student-speaker chat will begin in Physical Sciences Room 147 at 3:00 PM. All students are welcome! Refreshments will be served.
| Speaker: | Dr. Nicholas Suntzeff |
| Mitchell/Heep/Munnerlyn Professor of Observational Astronomy | |
| Department of Physics and Astronomy | |
| Texas A&M University, College Station, TX | |
| Date: | Thursday, October 10, 2013 |
| Time: | 3:30 PM |
| Place: | PS 110 |
| Title: | The Future of Supernova Cosmology |
It has been 12 years since the discovery of the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe by the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team. The initial discovery was based on distances to Type Ia supernovae (SNe), out to redshifts of z=0.8. A simple description of the discovery is that Type Ia SNe at redshifts of z=0.6 are too faint by 0.25 magnitudes with respect to an empty universe. The nearby SNe used in these projects, also were the key objects that defined the near-field Hubble flow, leading to the most precise measurements of the Hubble constant H0 when combined with distances to a small number of galaxies hosting Type Ia SNe. Another key observation, made by the Higher-Z Supernova Team, was that Type Ia SNe at redshifts greater than z=1 show clear evidence of deceleration, as expected from a simple cosmology with Ωmatter=0.23 and ΩΛ=0.74. With the addition of measurements of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the local volume, weak lensing of distant galaxies, the formation of large scale structure, and the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, we have now arrived at a concordance cosmology which so far has curvature Ωk=1 and Lemaître’s equation of state parameter w=−1.0 to 10% or so, with no meaningful measurement of any time rate of change of “dark energy.” A number of major surveys (SNLS, ESSENCE, SDSSIII) have finished, and larger surveys have been started (DES). Even larger surveys are being planned and built (LSST, Pan-STARRS). I will discuss the present status of cosmology and the supernova data for these projects, and give a glimpse of what is ahead.
Dr. Nicholas B. Suntzeff is a native of San Francisco and Corte Madera, California. He obtained a BS with distinction in mathematics from Stanford in 1974, and a PhD in Astronomy from UC Santa Cruz/Lick Observatory in 1980. He is a University Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M where he holds the Mitchell/Heep/Munnerlyn Chair in Observational Astronomy.
Dr. Suntzeff has studied supernovae and cosmology since 1985. He has run observing programs at major observatories studying supernovae of all types, and has helped build direct-imaging cameras with digital detectors and fiber-fed spectrographs. He cofounded the Calán/Tololo Supernova Survey in 1989 (with Hamuy, Maza, and Phillips) which established the use of Type Ia supernovae as the most accurate distance indicators in the distant universe, leading to the most accurate measurement of the Hubble constant. In 1994, he co-founded the High-Z Supernova Team with Brian Schmidt, which discovered dark energy/acceleration in 1998.Dr. Suntzeff and the High-Z Supernova Team received the Gruber Cosmology Prize in 2007 for that work. The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Schmidt and Riess of the High-Z Team, also in recognition of this science. In 2011, he worked as Humanitarian Affairs Officer in the Office of Human Rights in the US Department of State as a Jefferson Fellow administered by the National Academy of Sciences. In his position, he reviewed and commented on the science issues relating to the US foreign policy in human rights. He remains a consulting Humanitarian Affairs Officer until 2017, representing State at UN and White House venues.
Note: The traditional student-speaker chat will begin in Physical Sciences Room 147 at 3:00 PM. All students are welcome! Refreshments will be served.
| Speaker: | Dr. Edward S. Fry |
| George P. Mitchell Professor of Experimental Physics | |
| Department of Physics and Astronomy | |
| Texas A&M University, College Station, TX | |
| Date: | Thursday, October 10, 2013 |
| Time: | 8:00 PM |
| Place: | 123 Animal Science |
| Title: | Determinism, Einstein, and Quantum Mechanics |
Einstein believed that quantum mechanics was an incomplete theory. In that context, he is famously quoted from a letter he wrote to Max Born in 1944: “You believe in God playing dice and I in perfect laws in the world of things existing as real objects…” The interpretation of quantum mechanics will be discussed, and the decades long history of this contentious problem will be reviewed. A breakthrough analysis by John Bell made it possible to experimentally test these heretofore philosophical arguments. Results of the experimental tests of the Bell inequalities will be described and their present status will be discussed.
Edward Fry is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, and the George P. Mitchell Professor of Experimental Physics. He also serves as the Associate Department Head for Development.
In addition to university teaching, he is an advocate for K-12 physics education through such Texas A&M programs as the annual “Physics Festival” and the springtime “Saturday Morning Physics” series.
Dr. Fry’s research interests lie in atomic physics and light scattering, specifically, the foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum optics, laser excitation and ionization of atoms, surface scattering of hydrogen atoms, and multichannel scattered light polarization analysis.
A distinguished scientist, Dr. Fry is a Fellow of both the American Physical Society (elected in 1999) and the Optical Society of America (elected in 1996). He is the author or co-author of over 134 scientific papers.
| Speaker: | Dr. Alexander Khanov |
| Department of Physics | |
| Oklahoma State University | |
| Date: | Thursday, October 17, 2013 |
| Time: | 3:30 PM |
| Place: | PS 110 |
| Title: | The Higgs Family |
On July 4, 2012 the two large CERN experiments, ATLAS and CMS, announced observation of a new particle consistent with the famous long-sought for Higgs boson—the missing link of the Standard Model responsible for particle masses. A year later, after careful study of more than twice the amount of data than was available in July, the experimentalists were able to confirm that the new particle is indeed the Higgs boson. Physicists are now working on data analysis to figure out if this Higgs boson is indeed the one predicted by the Standard Model, or if it is part of a new physics model, which we are only beginning to uncover. I will talk about possible scenarios where the discovered particle is a part of a larger family and describe the perspectives of searches for Higgs beyond the Standard Model.
Note: The traditional student-speaker chat will begin in Physical Sciences Room 147 at 3:00 PM. All students are welcome! Refreshments will be served.
| Speaker: | Dr. Bruno Uchoa |
| Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics & Astronomy | |
| University of Oklahoma | |
| Date: | Thursday, October 24, 2013 |
| Time: | 3:30 PM |
| Place: | PS 110 |
| Title: | Anderson Localization in Graphene |
The diffusive motion of electrons in metals can be strongly affected by disorder. In two spatial dimensions, it is generically expected that electrons localize, a phenomenon known as Anderson localization, which motivated the Nobel prize in physics in 1977. Graphene is a two-dimensional allotrope of carbon, where the electrons disperse as Dirac particles, which are notoriously difficult to localize. In this talk, I will show under which conditions one expects a metal-insulator transition in graphene in the presence of the most common kinds of disorder.
Note: The traditional student-speaker chat will begin in Physical Sciences Room 147 at 3:00 PM. All students are welcome! Refreshments will be served.
| Speaker: | Dr. S. Dutta Gupta |
| School of Physics | |
| University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad 500046, INDIA | |
| Date: | Friday, October 25, 2013 |
| Time: | 2:00 PM |
| Place: | PS 147 |
| Title: | Perfect Absorption of Light: A Reality or a Myth |
I present a brief overview of coherent perfect absorption (CPA), also referred to as anti lasing or time reversed lasing, tracing its origin to perfect destructive interference. Identical physics was earlier exploited in critical coupling, where all the incident light energy is absorbed in the system, yielding null scattering. Further we consider excitation of a specific mode exploiting CPA in an otherwise multi modal system. Few interesting application of CPA for effective bending of light the wrong way will also be discussed. Finally we present our recent results for a Kerr nonlinear CPA system, which clearly identifies CPA as a very special kind of interference involving not only the phases but also the amplitudes.
| Speaker: | Dr. Howard A. Baer |
| Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics & Astronomy | |
| University of Oklahoma | |
| Date: | Thursday, October 31, 2013 |
| Time: | 1:30 PM |
| Place: | 106 B Studio Room, Classroom Building, OSU |
| & Nielsen Hall, Room 103, OU | |
| Title: | The post-LHC8 NON-crisis of electroweak fine-tuning in SUSY models |
No colloquium scheduled October 31. (Colloquium of Dr. Chuanwei Zhang is postponed.)
| Speaker: | Dr. Bruce J. Ackerson |
| Department of Physics | |
| Oklahoma State University | |
| Date: | Thursday, October 31, 2013 |
| Time: | 4:00 PM |
| Place: | CLB 321 |
| Title: | Bohm’s Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics |
Physicist Richard Feynman once remarked, “I think it is safe to say that no one understands quantum mechanics.” Today physicists treat quantum mechanics as a calculation tool to predict results of experiments, not as ontologically important to understanding reality. Why? Theoretical physicist and philosopher, David Bohm, gives an ontological interpretation of quantum mechanics that “feels” very classical but includes the wave nature of quantum mechanics, as well. Physicists ignore Bohm’s interpretation, because it makes no predictions different from existing quantum mechanics. Or so we thought, because it DOES make predictions not found in standard quantum mechanics; and these predictions have been observed. Should we now read reality into the mathematics of quantum mechanics as Bohm suggests?
Note: The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information please contact the OSU Philosophy Department. Phone: 405-744-6090. Email: philo@okstate.edu.
| Speaker: | Dr. Chung Kao |
| Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics & Astronomy | |
| University of Oklahoma | |
| Date: | Thursday, November 7, 2013 |
| Time: | 1:30 PM |
| Place: | 106 B Studio Room, Classroom Building, OSU |
| & Nielsen Hall, Room 103, OU | |
| Title: | When the Higgs meets the Top |
| Speaker: | Dr. Donghua Zhou |
| Department of Physics | |
| Oklahoma State University | |
| Date: | Thursday, November 7, 2013 |
| Time: | 3:30 PM |
| Place: | PS 110 |
| Title: | Biological Physics with NMR: Bone Characterization and Protein Structures |
Nuclear magnetic resonance is a powerful non-invasive method widely used in many research fields. My team has developed several new methods for studying biomaterials and macro-biomolecules. One of our interests is to study biochemical and microstructural properties of bone samples from animal models in normal and diseased states and their relation with mechanical properties. We also take advantage of the flexible sample requirement of solid-state NMR to investigate structures of membrane proteins, such as those involved in regulation of fat metabolism (lipid storage droplet proteins) and fusion of biological membranes (SNARE proteins). We have also solved structure for a protein (homologous pairing protein 2) that plays an important role to gene diversity when sperms and eggs are produced.
Note: The traditional student-speaker chat will begin in Physical Sciences Room 147 at 3:00 PM. All students are welcome! Refreshments will be served.
| Speaker: | Dr. Robert H. Austin |
| Department of Physics | |
| & Princeton University Physical Sciences-Oncology Center | |
| Princeton University | |
| Date: | Thursday, November 14, 2013 |
| Time: | 3:30 PM |
| Place: | PS 110 |
| Title: | The Physics of Cancer: Concepts and Techniques |
Cancer, in spite of 100 years of intensive efforts and many billions of dollars of research monies, remains stubbornly with us. The projection is that as our population ages by 2050 50% of us will be diagnosed with cancer during our lifetime, and of those diagnosed 50% will die. Why? I’ll cover two aspects of the problem: (1) The inevitable evolution of chemotherapy resistance which I think can be understood from a deep quantitative understanding of modern evolution (not neoDarwinism), and (2) the difficulty of designing ecologies that replicate the complex environment of a living organism. I’l present experiments that have addressed these issues, but offer no hope for a cure.
Note: The traditional student-speaker chat will begin in Physical Sciences Room 147 at 3:00 PM. All students are welcome! Refreshments will be served.
| Speaker: | Dr. Doyoun Kim |
| School of Physics | |
| Monash University, Melbourne, Australia | |
| Date: | Thursday, November 21, 2013 |
| Time: | 1:30 PM |
| Place: | 106 B Studio Room, Classroom Building, OSU |
| & Nielsen Hall, Room 103, OU | |
| Title: | Fine-Tuning Map of CMSSM and NMSSM in the Bayesian analysis |
The naturalness problem has been one of the most urgent problems of the Standard Model, having induced a variety of new physics models to suggest lesser fine-tuned solutions to the light Higgs mass. As of the recent Higgs discovery at 126 GeV mass, it is not a phenomenological requirement to find a plausible Higgs mass value. Rather, what kind of model can accommodate 126 GeV Higgs more naturally than the others. In this talk, we review several main versions of fine-tuning measure and discuss what feature of cancellation they are focusing on. Different definitions of fine-tuning claim the naturalness of a model differently, and the preferred parameter regions for a given model are not necessarily the same.
We focus on the example of the mSUGRA/CMSSM case, and then finally the NMSSM which is believed to loosen the hierarchy problem of the Higgs mass of the MSSM.
No colloquium scheduled November 21. Faculty meeting instead.
Thanksgiving
Students’ Thanksgiving break, November 27-29.
Prefinals Week
Cancelled.
Finals Week
No talks scheduled
No talks scheduled
No talks scheduled
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